Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (00:12):
Welcome to the Return of the Oz Come show. I can’t even say my own show’s name. Nice. Here we are and as you can see, Morgan is missing and we’ve got Peter Wilson or by Peter Wilson. I should say hello. Easy to tell us. I’ve got a lot of this going on and I’ve got almost none. There you go. So tonight we’re talking to Bradley Aiden. He is about to launch a Kickstarter tomorrow for Super Ready Battle Armor five. Give us a thumbs up, Bradley, if I got that right. Yep. Cool. Okay. So yeah, that’s how I’m saying tomorrow. So let’s get on with the show and let’s talk to Bradley. Hello Bradley, how are you? Hello.

Bradley Adan (01:18):
I’m good. How are you guys?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:20):
Good, thanks. And just to anyone watching the intro, there it is Peter, even though the intro was very blatantly talking about Morgan, so I’ll probably start off the questions tonight. Well, Morgan’s not here and he used to do all the work for me, all the heavy lifting, so I’m not going to put that pressure on Peter. So I’ll just start with the normal basic one. For anyone who hasn’t seen the last show, tell us a bit about yourself and what first got you into comics.

Bradley Adan (01:51):
Yeah, no, my name is Bradley Aiden as Sizzle. Nicely said before, got into comics quite young as a well, more so writing as a form of escapism. I suffer from a couple of chronic illnesses now, but as a child I got diagnosed with a pretty severe heart condition at the age of five and yeah, just kind of dove headfirst into video games, comics and stuff and yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:31):
Alright, cool. So what would be your key influences, you reckon I’m saying Mango?

Bradley Adan (02:42):
Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent anime, mango, very influenced by a lot of the nineties, early two thousands anime and then did a bit of a pivot, worked backwards and shifted into more mango and comics in my late teens.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:11):
Okay. Is there any particular writer? Any particular?

Bradley Adan (03:16):
Yeah, so Odor, the guy behind one piece, probably one of the biggest selling mongers in the world.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:28):
Oh wow, I didn’t know that. Yeah,

Bradley Adan (03:30):
Outsells Batman. It’s insane.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:33):
Wow, that is impressive. That is insane.

Bradley Adan (03:37):
Some crazy numbers.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:40):
Yeah, well I guess probably with that comic, is there any characters you identify with yourself or with your own characters, for example?

Bradley Adan (03:52):
Oh, that’s an interesting one, Shane.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:57):
Oh, sorry.

Bradley Adan (04:01):
Damn man. There’s a lot of characters in one piece. A lot of the tropes that get heavily used in shown and jump brand, which one piece is a part of boiled down to never giving up, believing in your friends and just persevering completely. And I like to think that the perseverance that the main characters and whatnot has done the reverse and instilled things onto myself more so than seeing myself in the characters.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (04:53):
No, no, I like that. Yeah, cool.

Bradley Adan (04:58):
I think there’s a lot of learning that we can do from our fictional characters.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (05:05):
Yeah, well that’s true. I had say the same things with myself when I was growing up. I had a lot of comic influence. I was big time comic, just not re and stuff I didn’t even know that existed when I was growing up. And yeah, I was very similar. I took on a lot of morals and just lessons from the characters I read. So I can totally understand that. So you are a writer.

Bradley Adan (05:32):
Yes.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (05:33):
So what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever come up with and did it end up in print?

Bradley Adan (05:45):
Weirdest thing that I’ve probably ever come up. It’s a bit subjective, but

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (05:51):
No, that’s cool.

Bradley Adan (05:54):
Probably one of, there’s two moments in Super Eddie Bat Lama that I’ve come up with. One has made it to print and the second hasn’t quite, the first would be crafting a superior AI intelligence that is remotely controlling a bucket and a mop for its body.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (06:20):
I do love that. I do love that. That’s awesome. Yeah,

Peter Wilson (06:24):
That character did make me double take, but I loved every second of reading it.

Bradley Adan (06:28):
Thanks man. Susan is probably one of my favorite characters alongside Inis to write and most of if not all of the crazy wacky aspects come from them. And the second one that hasn’t quite made it to print is Professor Inis inventing a magical glove that can pull the food from anime into material being and theoretically could be used to pull anything out of a screen, but he only utilizes it and market it towards being used to steal food from anime.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (07:15):
I like that. Feed the masses.

Bradley Adan (07:18):
That’s it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (07:22):
Now I’m going to go just left field here. If you’ve got tattoos, then a tattoo you haven’t got, if you haven’t got tattoos, if you were going to get a tattoo, what would it be?

Bradley Adan (07:37):
Don’t have any tattoos. Not sure if I can get tattoos, but hypothetically speaking,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (07:45):
Yeah, hypothetically speaking,

Bradley Adan (07:55):
I actually haven’t put a whole lot of thought into this.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:00):
That’s okay. This is the left field question. So

Bradley Adan (08:03):
I had probably like to get something from one piece. There’s just as a basic first tattoo, I’d get the plain black X on the back of my hand that the straw hat crew get two distinguished, one another’s from a doppelganger enemy that they have to fight against.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:31):
Oh, very cool. Yeah,

Bradley Adan (08:33):
Very tropey. But yeah, I reckon that’d be a pretty cool little first tattoo.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:42):
So mine’s a little bit bigger than that, but it involves an X. It’s here on the shoulder, but it’s to do with the X-Men. Nice. My dream is massive, but I can’t afford it, so I might throw

Peter Wilson (08:57):
Over the Peter, I’d get X on me because that’s where the treasure is.

Bradley Adan (09:02):
Nice. I like it.

Peter Wilson (09:03):
It marks the spot.

Bradley Adan (09:06):
No, not going to

Peter Wilson (09:07):
Ask where the

Bradley Adan (09:08):
Spot is.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (09:10):
I was about to ask and I thought, is that safe?

Peter Wilson (09:17):
No, I don’t want to say it because it’s crass, but it would hurt to get it on my penis.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (09:24):
Don’t say

Peter Wilson (09:25):
It so I won’t say it. I’ll keep it classy.

Bradley Adan (09:28):
Love it, love it.

Peter Wilson (09:30):
So I’m curious, I had the pleasure of reading your first four issues last night.

Bradley Adan (09:39):
Ooh.

Peter Wilson (09:39):
Spicy. And I was really impressed with the size of the cast of characters you’ve got.

Bradley Adan (09:45):
Thanks man. Is this a good surprise or a bad surprise?

Peter Wilson (09:50):
No good. It’s not very often you see that usually most indie comics are limited to, they sort of have a focal point of maybe two, three characters. You’ve got a pretty wide cast or reminded me of X-Men, team titans, like you said, the very early two thousands sort of cartoons you might see. Is it a challenge juggling all those introductions, the subplots? It must be hard to keep that all going.

Bradley Adan (10:13):
I’ve kind of gotten into a flow with it now at the start it definitely was. I had done a pilot version of the series before and the introduction is very different. So the introduction in this version of Super Eddie Battle Armor would be, I’d consider the first two issues issue one almost in terms of introducing the characters and whatnot. So

(10:58)
The juggling of giving everybody enough screen time is still probably the hardest aspect of juggling the big cast. But now that I’ve gotten to issue five, it’s getting easier where before it was who’s important to get front and center first, which in issue one you had the flash forward sequence, which gave you a taste of the action and then we hard cut to focusing only on BA in his immediate circle. And then issue two was wholly focused on in factor in his circle at the same time of the events of issue one up until they meet that at that halfway point in issue two and then the world’s collide and we pretty much steamroll ahead. The plot takes care of itself for me at the moment, which is nice. And the characters are just kind of bouncing off one another and I’m just along for the ride at this stage.

Peter Wilson (12:16):
Look, I definitely feel in lesser hands that sheer amount of exposition and introductions, which is always tricky, would not be done as well. But I think you’ve handled it really well. I think the dialogue flows, reads really well and naturally the pacing’s really good. It’s funny where it’s funny, but then you get serious when you have to. There’s a good little midsection there. You’ve hit I think

Bradley Adan (12:39):
Sick. Thanks so much, man. That means a lot.

Peter Wilson (12:43):
Oh, no problem. My pleasure. I might just jump

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (12:47):
In there. Oh, sorry.

Peter Wilson (12:48):
Yes,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (12:49):
There’s a bit of a delay between us, I’m noticing.

Peter Wilson (12:52):
Yes.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (12:54):
So all I was going to say is with the story itself, this is issue five. Do you have them all planned out? You’ve got a number that you’re going to stop at. You don’t have to give us the number if it’s a bit of a you own little secret there. But have you got a number of issues in your mind that this story is going to take place?

Bradley Adan (13:15):
I would consider up to issue six, part one, pardon me, of the story story arc that I’m working on and I tentatively say Act one will wrap up in maybe 12 issues.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (13:37):
Okay, okay.

Bradley Adan (13:40):
Ideally as a writer though, I hate to make promises like that. It’ll always blow out to four.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (13:49):
Of course. Of course.

Bradley Adan (13:51):
But at the current stage, yeah, it’d probably be, yeah, probably about 12 issues I reckon. Great. Okay. So probably end up doing four trades.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (14:08):
Oh cool. Nice.

Bradley Adan (14:11):
We have those up and collected and all out. And then reassess what the popularity is sort of like and the future of the series going from there. But issue 12 will be a period, but the door will be left open for more.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (14:31):
So what you’re saying is going to go a hundred and beyond, so good to know. Good to know.

Bradley Adan (14:39):
I mean, we could start aiming for 1000,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (14:47):
My cupboard,

Peter Wilson (14:47):
Gestating, this idea.

Bradley Adan (14:50):
Yeah, been working.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (14:53):
No,

Bradley Adan (14:55):
Been working on it for over 10 years now. Total.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (15:02):
Yeah, great.

Bradley Adan (15:05):
Probably late around when I was maybe 18, so actually probably more than that. That’s probably 12 years now. I forget how old I am.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (15:15):
I have that same problem. I have that same problem.

Bradley Adan (15:19):
I mean after 20 they all just, it’s numbers.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (15:25):
No, it wasn’t until I was 40 that they all became numbers.

Bradley Adan (15:29):
Well, alright, I guess I’m starting early then.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (15:32):
Starting early. What I was going to ask is just from your perspective, tell us about the protagonist. I can actually say the word from your perspective because reading it, you get your own ideas of course. So from your, are they single-minded and are they, what’s the word I’m looking for here? Self-righteous, that sort of stuff. What would you say they are? And I know there’s more than one. So

Bradley Adan (16:04):
That was going to be my first thing. I was

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (16:07):
Just do the main ones if you want. Although they’re all main ones. I dunno. I’ll let you decide.

Bradley Adan (16:15):
I was going to ask preface which one you were talking about, but you caught me to it. The first one that popped to mind was definitely infector. He is the personification of my fear of death in relation to he being the solution to that fear. Like I mentioned earlier, chronic heart illness since I was a wheel lad, going through all of the whole chronic illness side of things, there was a lot of the why me sort of shit. And it would just be easier if there was this superhero that could come and fix. And of course being in a children’s hospital, there was a lot of different kids around me as well that were also sick. So it was a pretty depressing place,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (17:14):
I can imagine.

Bradley Adan (17:16):
And so after having a few pretty close calls with death itself and not really having any of those experiences that you hear about, seeing a bright warm light and seeing your life flash before your eyes, not that there was much of a life there, I was only five, but that emptiness kind of scared the shit out of me. And that’s essentially where the whole concept of infect powers came from. That’s really cool. So in terms of your question, it’s hard to pin down with ECT just a little bit because of how personal it is, but he pretty much represents a lot of my insecurities. And because of that, he’s a very insecure individual who wants to try and break out of his shell, but is also scared to do so. Okay. So kind of like a paradoxical hero wants to be that. But sorry, what were you going to say?

Peter Wilson (18:57):
After I read your comics, I read up about you and you’ve been very open about your heart condition as a child and everything you’ve been through. And it really does give the comic some great context because I think Infector has that thing that all classic heroes have that we can relate to where we’d love to be able to give a little extra health, extra life to someone to help. Much like Superman was the archetypal immigrant to Schuster and Siegel Batman’s the archetype orphan that gives us strength. I think Infector is much come.

Bradley Adan (19:26):
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s cool. I’m glad that translates across. I yeah, I like how you equated him to almost being like a healer in MMO.

Peter Wilson (19:45):
Absolutely. I love the imagery that goes with that too. The life and death battery that comes up.

Bradley Adan (19:52):
Yeah, I thought that was a cool way

Peter Wilson (19:54):
To, it’s a nice little visual. It’s clever.

Bradley Adan (19:56):
Yeah. Thanks man. This is cool. I like this podcast.

Peter Wilson (20:04):
Now I’m going to start insulting you to bring you down a few pegs,

Bradley Adan (20:08):
Emotional rollercoaster. And then on the flip side of that, you’ve got BA who is pretty much your stock standard hero. He is the fun, active, outgoing, everybody loves him, but he’s got some shit going on too, which is about to be revealed in this issue, which I’m really excited for. I’m getting to the point where I’m surpassing what I’ve previously done in the pilot. So I’m really excited about this current issue in particular, mainly just because it’s super new content that I’m excited to get out. The next one would probably be Violet. I would say she’s definitely taken a much more front and center role than she did in the pilot where she was a bit more of a bit a gag character where she’s a bit more serious and I know how to write a girl better essentially. And she is pretty much encapsulated by, what’s the word, optimism, I got stuck on enthusiastic. She’s very optimistic about everything. She is pretty much in love with life and creativity. And then on the duality side of her, you have a Claire who’s the secret agent that’s related to ba and she’s the first antagonist of the series.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (22:32):
Okay.

Bradley Adan (22:35):
And then I’d probably say everyone else is kind of supporting roles at the moment.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (22:42):
I forgot to download two pictures. Take over Peter,

Peter Wilson (22:48):
No pressure. I’m curious as to what your, how’s your working process with your artist? I hope I’m saying this right, Louis?

Bradley Adan (22:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter Wilson (23:03):
How did you guys meet? How did you kick this off? Did you just give him a script? Did someone introduce you to

Bradley Adan (23:10):
The internet is a wonderful thing. A hundred percent. I actually found him on a, I guess you’d call it a crowd sourcing hub called Upwork. Oh,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (23:28):
Upwork. Yeah.

Bradley Adan (23:31):
So I put up a job posting and got a bunch. It was really weird. I actually basically just did a job posting, had applications sent to me and made a short list and ended up deciding to go with Louis. And yeah, we’ve done five issues together. Plus say a short three page comic for free comic book day before Covid hit real hard.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:04):
Oh

Bradley Adan (24:05):
Yeah. It was actually for the 2020s free comic book day, which we never actually got to do.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:12):
Oh, that’s a shame. Yeah, so all that art you sent me, is that all by Lewis? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well let’s show some of it then. Even these ones here.

Bradley Adan (24:23):
Yep. That’s the cover for issue five.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:26):
Oh, that’s the cover? No,

Bradley Adan (24:28):
Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve got two covers and this one’s not done by Louis. This one’s done by a good friend

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:34):
Of mine. Mine. Does that look different?

Bradley Adan (24:36):
Yeah, a Melbourne artist named Kyle Link. He does a lot of the comic circuits.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:44):
Okay, cool. So those five pages, is it five? No, six pages? Do you want me to go through them and you just quickly it? Yeah, sure. Now I got ’em in random order. So I don’t know if how they might be in the wrong word. I’m not sure because their file names are all over the shop.

Bradley Adan (25:03):
That’s all good. They are, but it’s fine.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (25:07):
I love this thing where you have the, I dunno what you’d call it, the real world version of them, and then they do things with little childish versions of themselves.

Bradley Adan (25:18):
Oh yeah, the chippy smaller cartoony. Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (25:23):
Yeah, yeah. I’m looking through them today again and I’ve noticed that. So yeah,

Bradley Adan (25:30):
Very typical in anime mango.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (25:34):
Oh, see, I’m not used to mango. So yeah,

Bradley Adan (25:39):
Something that they utilize quite often in speech bubbles is a little tiny picture of whatever character’s speaking, if they want to do a big establishing shot, so they’ll have the actual bubble with the words in it. And then tiny little picture of the say main character that’s talking just to indicate who’s actually talking without having to compromise on the art.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (26:11):
Well that’s really cool. I didn’t know it did that, but then again, very western. Yeah, nice and boring.

Bradley Adan (26:21):
No, there’s some really interesting differences between the two mediums, even though they’re basically the same.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (26:29):
I was bringing up another picture for you. Anything there? Oh yeah,

Bradley Adan (26:33):
So I actually started this for the girls, this chapter with a full introspection of the main villain for the first story arc. So these two are the couple that’s been put on pause due to their ambitions to make a livable city.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (26:58):
Okay. Is this a bit more of the same? Yep.

Bradley Adan (27:04):
Yeah, so this, if you can put one and one together, I can. That’s all right. Maybe when you’re a bit older.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (27:19):
Sorry, it’s, sorry, I thought I throw that out there. See what you said. Cool.

Bradley Adan (27:25):
Just helping her with some lab work

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (27:27):
Of

Bradley Adan (27:27):
Course. And then having a cigarette afterwards,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (27:30):
Of course, as you do when you help someone with lab work.

Bradley Adan (27:33):
Absolutely,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (27:34):
Yes.

Bradley Adan (27:38):
And something I learned from reading a couple of different manga is utilizing real world elements to do world exposition. So I think it was in issue one. I utilized the TV reporter in the TV that’s in the background to give some exposition and world building doing the same here in issue five as well. And instead of it just being a couple of panels, it’s the full page, which then transitions into it just being played on a laptop in the room where the guys that were fighting in the other page that we saw, I think second.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (28:28):
Ah, and yeah, just to keep it all random and in different order. And I think this is,

Bradley Adan (28:33):
And then this is back to the couple when they’re being all introspective

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (28:40):
Cool

Bradley Adan (28:40):
And monologuing and shit.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (28:45):
Yeah, I’ve riff run through all the pages, just everyone can see that awesome art. So yeah, that’s tomorrow. People QuickStarter Bradley, what I’ll do is, do you have a quick way to get that link that you can put into the

Bradley Adan (28:56):
Private? I certainly do,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (28:58):
And then I can spread that out to everyone. I should have asked you for this beforehand. That’s all

Bradley Adan (29:01):
Right. I should have been organized too.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (29:08):
Yeah. So Kickstarter tomorrow, super battle. No, super ready Battle armor. I’ll get it right.

Bradley Adan (29:16):
It’s a good man.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (29:17):
It’s a bit

Bradley Adan (29:17):
Of a mouthful. S rba. If it’s too much of a mouthful, we’ll just go SRBA.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (29:22):
No, because then I’ll mix the letters up. You just watch. I’m good at this. I’m a master at stuffing up words and names. So yeah, that’s tomorrow everyone. What time do you plan to launch? Do you have a time or you’re just going to I believe

Bradley Adan (29:38):
It’s 6:00 AM.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (29:40):
6:00 AM Wow. There you go.

Bradley Adan (29:43):
I know I get up around that time anyway for work, unfortunately.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (29:47):
Oh, fair enough.

Bradley Adan (29:53):
There we are.

Peter Wilson (29:54):
I’ve got another left field question for you. Beautiful. You get to work with one major established character, who would you pick? It doesn’t have to be comics, cartoons, maybe

Bradley Adan (30:17):
Just to be different and not Say one piece again. I’ll go Spider-Man.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (30:23):
Oh nice. Good

Bradley Adan (30:25):
Choice. Good

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (30:25):
Choice. He’s a smart fellow, that one.

Bradley Adan (30:28):
And it kind of bleeds, I think a lot of Spider-Man writing styles bleed that line between comic and mango sometimes. Anyway, I think I’d fit nicely in there. I don’t know if I could handle any of the other Western heroes

Peter Wilson (30:50):
A good one.

Bradley Adan (30:52):
Yeah, no, I do like my Spider-Man.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (30:57):
Now I’ve got, oh, sorry. You look like you’re about to ask. I was just going to say this is a common question by Morgan. So I thought just to say hello to Morgan, if you’re watching, he has this one. You’ve got five minutes to sit down with your protagonist. Why can’t I say that word seriously to give them some advice? What would it be?

Peter Wilson (31:23):
That is good.

Bradley Adan (31:36):
Have good friends, take strong counsel and believe in yourself. I don’t think I need five minutes.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:44):
Nice.

Bradley Adan (31:45):
Yeah,

Peter Wilson (31:47):
Very

Bradley Adan (31:47):
Good. I like that If you surround yourself with good people, listen to their advice and believe in yourself, you can’t go wrong. Can I adhere to that life advice myself? Probably not. But I think it’s still good advice.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (32:07):
It’s good advice. That’s very good advice. That’s awesome. Now let Peter say what he was going to say.

Peter Wilson (32:14):
What was I going to say?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (32:16):
Okay.

Peter Wilson (32:17):
No, I was, when you write a script, how long is that process?

Bradley Adan (32:24):
So the other chronic thing that I was talking about before, I’ve recently been diagnosed with A DHD, so it can take anywhere from a day to a month. It varies. If I get in the zone, I can smash out a script pretty quick. Other times it’s like pulling teeth, it’s getting that motivation or writing that motivation wave, catching it at the right time. Otherwise probably if I had to, we’ll say no motivation and had to sit down and just normal it two weeks maybe.

Peter Wilson (33:11):
And what advice would you give to anyone looking to start their own comic? They want to get writing, they want to start creating. What do you tell ’em?

Bradley Adan (33:21):
I believe a very famous man once said, just do it. I think his name was Nike. The brand. The brand of Nike. What? The flash. Thank you. Thank you. Oh man, that was terrible. But yeah, honestly, just start writing, start drawing. It’s never too late to start, but it is. I was going to say something really intelligent there, but it just escaped me at the end of it. But yeah, just do it, man. You’ll only be terrible for so long. The longer you keep at it, the better you’re going to get. So just start now before it’s too late.

Peter Wilson (34:23):
We’re big believers of that at Comex too.

Bradley Adan (34:26):
Just end it on a real slumber note.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (34:29):
Oh, there’s no ending. I’ll throw a question out there now. If you could collaborate with anyone in the industry, in the comic industry or mander industry, I guess we’ll throw that out there as well. I think I might know the answer to this one anyway, but who would it be? A dream collaboration?

Bradley Adan (34:51):
Probably a completely different manga artist than you’re thinking of. Oh, okay. A guy named Jji Ito. Excellent. Very, yes. He’s a very prolific horror. I don’t think I could hold a candle to the stuff that he writes, but I would love to work with him and just pick a part. His brain, his work is just absolutely insane. Just completely nuts. Definitely worth a read if you’re a horror fan,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:30):
You’ve got someone agreeing there.

Bradley Adan (35:32):
Thank you. Thank you. I don’t know how much of the anime that I could recommend though, but if you use that as a jumping on point, then go right ahead.

Peter Wilson (35:44):
Good thing about Jji stuff. You can find it in most bookstores as well. He’s very popular at the moment. It’s awesome.

Bradley Adan (35:52):
I think my favorite is at the moment is which is all about spirals.

Peter Wilson (35:59):
Yes.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:59):
Okay.

Bradley Adan (36:00):
Really, really horrifying sort of. Yeah. Big on the body horror as well.

Peter Wilson (36:07):
Very,

Bradley Adan (36:08):
Yeah.

Peter Wilson (36:09):
I don’t particularly want to see the human anatomy through his eyes.

Bradley Adan (36:13):
No. Although he draws it so well to be able to distort it. I kind of do. Just to get some tips on how he does that. My god.

Peter Wilson (36:27):
Well, he was a dentist for a few years. I think he studied anatomy for a long time at medical school, so he was putting it to good use instead of wasting his time being a doctor. He did comic instead.

Bradley Adan (36:40):
Oh, I haven’t seen his Frankenstein interpretation. That’d be sick

Peter Wilson (36:45):
Nor I actually, that’s the one I haven’t read yet.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (36:48):
Oh, they go. Something to catch up on. I’ll do one question for Peter and then I’ll do our traditional questions after that to wrap up our time with you Bradley. So you got something else, Peter, or do you want me to go straight

Peter Wilson (37:00):
Into it? No, I’m good.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:02):
Good. Okay. So there’s our typical questions. Morgan usually asks these and he’s better at asking questions than me. But if your villain was sitting in the back of the car and you’re going through the McDonald’s drive-through, what would they order?

Bradley Adan (37:25):
Four double quarter pounders with extra bacon and extra pickles.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:32):
Nice. I think I’d order that also.

Peter Wilson (37:36):
Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:42):
Okay. And I’ve asked that one. I think I feel

Bradley Adan (37:43):
Sick just making that order. Oh, the oil. Anyway, sorry.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:50):
No, no, that’s fine. That’s fine. Actually, I just realized I asked some of these already. So the big one that he always asks at the end before we present the gifts, which Morgan hasn’t done his gift. He didn’t have time. So it’s just me. I dunno if Peter had time, but favorite food watching your favorite movie. Now when I say favorite movie, I don’t mean of all time. I mean right this moment in time.

Bradley Adan (38:23):
All right. Eating Ramen, watching Captain Hallock, space Pirate.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:30):
Oh nice.

Bradley Adan (38:34):
Is a very cringe movie, but it’s so good. It’s bad the other way around so bad. It’s good,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:42):
It’s good. I know you mean you’re talking like me now. It must be contagious.

Bradley Adan (38:46):
That’s it. It’s actually for free on YouTube to watch legally. Is it? Yeah. Oh wow. Yeah. Alright, let’s wrap this up. 10 80 p. It’s pretty good. Based on a eighties anime. Beautiful. So it’s hella cheesy.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (39:07):
That’s fine. And I’ve totally stuffed up the timing, so I’m going to ask one more question. Question. So what’s the most challenging thing about this project so far? Or just the comic industry in general to you?

Bradley Adan (39:27):
My project in particular, the biggest challenges is primarily just funding, hence Kickstarter. But most of the other challenges are quite easily manageable. I would say exposure is another one is getting yourself out there is probably one of the harder. Yes, that’s very hard. Getting yourself recognized and known is probably the hardest next to whatever financial things could possibly affect you. And that kind of bleeds into the macro question that you had there as well. Indie comics is hard. I do feel it’s harder in Australia than it is in say the States or Japan. I think comics here in Australia have had a bit of a weird sort of niche still almost. It didn’t take off as big as it has in other countries. Still obviously quite large here, but I still feel we’re quite young in our comic age in the a US. It’s almost agree with.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:53):
Yeah, almost well

Bradley Adan (40:55):
Done. Almost got there. And so I think there’s a lot of passion for it, but not super amount of support. And I’m talking more on the macro level. So there are a few arts, what do they call them? There’s a special word for it, but it’s basically a handout I

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (41:24):
Grants,

Bradley Adan (41:25):
That’s the one. It sounds better than a handout. There are some art grants, but obviously it’s more probably focused in on your traditional arts, less so in your graphic novels and things like that. So I mean I do feel like there is stuff there, but the foundation is still growing I think in our country.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (41:54):
Very true With that.

Bradley Adan (41:55):
That would be what I would say the biggest challenges are is in our indie comic scene in Australia.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (42:05):
And like you were saying before, getting out there and being heard and seen is also because I’ll be the first to admit comics developed from the simple fact that three years ago, I think it is now, I discovered indie comics for the first time.

Bradley Adan (42:22):
My point exactly.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (42:24):
Yeah. So I went, this is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. Someone has to do something about this. And for some god forsaken reason, I decided that was me, but I’ve given it my best shot. But the hero that you didn’t want,

Bradley Adan (42:45):
Cool. But we need,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (42:47):
Yes. Well, what I’ll do is I’ll move on to my gift for you and what the gift is, is what me and Morgan do. And I’ve limited Peter to if he’s got a chance, I did get something done. You did get something done. Me and Morgan, what we do is neither of us are artists. So we’re allowed 10 minutes to draw as much as we can of a character from the person’s comic.

Bradley Adan (43:14):
Yes.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (43:17):
With Peter, I limited that to a few minutes because he’s an artist and it just isn’t fair. So yeah. So I’ll bring up my gift to you, which is

Bradley Adan (43:33):
Yes, not what I was expecting, but I’m loving it. So Shane, why did you choose this piece to replicate?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (43:43):
Just look cool,

Bradley Adan (43:46):
Love it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (43:47):
That’s all it was. I was like looking at everything else, I’m like, oh, this one stands out. The most people know that it’s from the comic. If I draw anything else, it could look like it was from anywhere. It could just, if I draw a person, unless they have a very specific thing about them and I couldn’t find quickly enough a picture of that dude as a person with those two cool arms because I needed reference. I couldn’t just do it off the top of my head. I’m not an artist, so I went, oh, there’s a picture I want. Not quite what I was after, but it’ll do.

Bradley Adan (44:21):
That’ll work.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (44:22):
It looks very cool and it’ll be very obvious what I was trying to draw. Emphasis on trying. Yeah,

Bradley Adan (44:27):
No, no. It’s very noticeable what it is. You’ve done better than what I can do. Hence I only do the words

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (44:36):
I opted for the professor character.

Bradley Adan (44:39):
Yes,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (44:40):
With the bucket.

Bradley Adan (44:42):
Love it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (44:47):
I like drawing and the like. They’re always fun. At least I didn’t go second. That’s all I’m glad of now. I couldn’t have followed that. Yes, you cool dad.

Bradley Adan (45:01):
Thanks guys. Those are awesome.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (45:05):
Cool. No problem. Well that’s the end of the show. Give yourself a bit of a plug for tomorrow and then we’ll wrap up.

Bradley Adan (45:12):
Absolutely. Guys, if you like anime manga or just want to support indie comics in Australia, please jump over to our Kickstarter to help fund the creation of issue five or Super Eddie battle armor and get yourself something really cool in the process. We’re going to have pins, we’re going to have stickers. If you want a pin of a super advanced robot lady who just may happen to look like a bucket, we got that for you. We will have five comics there on offer as well as a selection of halter productions, other comics that is under the label. So like in purgatory, others that I can’t remember because I don’t want to promise you something that isn’t on there.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (46:00):
Makes sense.

Bradley Adan (46:03):
But yeah, no, for the first time we’ll have stickers as well. I’m excited about those. They look so cool. We have a couple of slots for getting yourself cameo into the comic, which will also come with a little character sheet as well. I’m panicking now. I think that’s everything.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (46:26):
Cool. Well, for something different, we’ve got ourselves a question from the audience. Ooh.

Bradley Adan (46:37):
Ooh, that’s cool. I try and do as much research about any particular thing that I’m doing at that time and get as much accurate information as possible. And then I decide whether or not I’m going to adhere or askew the laws of physics. So in particular, big reveal that’s about to happen in this issue. BA gets superpowers. Those superpowers are going to be gravity based. I did a lot of research into that and I’m going to try and have that adhere as much as possible, even though obviously humans can’t control gravity. But then when it comes to infect abilities of being able to bring people back from the dead, kind of, not really. I’ve done research obviously into how the body functions and the breakdown of atoms and things and positive and negatives and then just decided to go with the metaphor of the positive and negative being the life energy and death energy. The positive and the negative. Neither are bad, neither is good. There are just essentially different energies and when one overtakes the other, depending on what you are, the body perishes. So you could have a life form, you could have a death form completely made up. Bullshit,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:32):
Dubious. Cool. Well I worded that really badly before at the end of the show. It’s just the end of our time with Bradley. So support is Kickstarter. Tomorrow I’ll be up at six because I have this thing where I always want to be the first one, so I’ll be trying to be the first one to support it.

Bradley Adan (48:52):
Excellent.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:54):
Good luck to everyone to beat me.

Bradley Adan (48:58):
Let’s go.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:59):
The

Bradley Adan (48:59):
Challenge has been a set.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (49:02):
Yes. So thank you very much for tonight. It was very entertaining and educational. Yes.

Bradley Adan (49:11):
Thanks for the

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (49:12):
To get your perspective.

Bradley Adan (49:14):
No, anytime. It was awesome to be on.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (49:17):
Cool. Thank you very much Bradley. I’ll let you go see you guys. Have a great night and we’ll go to the next section. See you later buddy.

Bradley Adan (49:24):
See you guys.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (49:25):
See you Brad. Have a good one. And I really should have had that ready. Kick us off, what do we do now?

(49:43)
And because Peter’s not familiar with the show, he’s not familiar with the fact that we now talk about a comic we’ve read this week. I will start. Excellent. Am I holding it the right way? Hang on. Yeah, I’m forgetting the buttons. It’s been that long since I’ve done this show. Oh, that’s a great puzzle. Lecture. This is, look at that. An interesting little read. It’s only very small, which is probably why I picked it because I didn’t have a lot of time. And yes, so basically I love the beginning of this one. I’ll just read out the first page. This comment contains references and depictions of suicide, depression and self-harm. So it’s not a very nice little thing. Please exercise caution when reading. If you’re distressed or need help, call Lifeline. One, three, one, one, one, four. So that’s pretty cool.

Peter Wilson (50:41):
Always important.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (50:42):
Yeah, you are stronger than you think so. Absolutely. So nice little black and white. Nice little black and white, basically. Beautiful. I’m assuming dude. Yeah, dude. Depressed. Very upset. I’m not going to try to bring the show down so I won’t go into everything. But basically he’s attacked by a murderer, a slasher, a guy with a knife and a mask. Pretty much Jason, I guess you’d say. Yes, he does sizzle pick slasher. That’s nice. Yes. And he has to very almost instantly work through his issues and fight back.

Peter Wilson (51:33):
Interesting.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (51:39):
Should I ruin the ending? I don’t think I will. But yeah, he has to fight back. No spoilers. No spoilers. So he has to fight back. It’s only small comics, so not a lot happens. But that’s my where

Peter Wilson (51:51):
Er

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (51:51):
Pick up. I picked this up from, well, I’ve got a pile and I got it either from Impact or Dee’s comics in Canberra. The pile has stuff from both comic stores, so I can’t remember which one I got from which. But yeah, if you want a copy, I should have really looked up how you can get a copy before I did this. But time has been short for me.

Peter Wilson (52:16):
Great cover. Very tall bass. 1960s.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:18):
Yeah, and it’s quite a weak concept. I don’t really fully understand what happens at the end, but it’s still cool. Nice. Well just before the end end, you know what I mean? So yeah, it was cool little comic. As much as it was a sad little topic, it was still very cool to read.

Peter Wilson (52:38):
Yeah, absolutely. I found this obscure little number online. I

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:45):
Love, love that comic thing behind you. I’m so jealous. That’s a

Peter Wilson (52:50):
Proper spinner rack. I’ve got that time

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:52):
I was looking for

Peter Wilson (52:53):
Shop here in Newcastle.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (52:54):
That’s awesome.

Peter Wilson (52:56):
And I was stoked to have my very own one and I just wheeled around with me wherever I go. This is Eureka. This is real old. It’s like, what does it say here? Yeah, 1988. It’s as old as me. It’s almost like a Comex prototype. It’s got four short stories.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:22):
Oh cool.

Peter Wilson (53:23):
You got a verity in there. She’s a classic Australian character. Very 2000 ad. Look at the detail in that. Art is incredible.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:32):
Nice, nice.

Peter Wilson (53:35):
You got some sfi, some noir. You got a classic historical little piece there. You got this one. That’s a nice mix tank girl kind of thing. Yeah, it’s beautiful. Nice. I had not heard of this comic at all. This one sent me back a bit, but it was worth it. That’s some nice pinup kind of pages here. I’m assuming a lot of Australian readers who have been reading Australian comics for a while, Noah Verity, Aloha. I think she had a resurgence with IDW not too long ago. And the guy who bought it from me threw an issue too for half, which has most of the same titles.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:18):
Continuations

Peter Wilson (54:19):
That goes back away. Yeah, a couple of standalone.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:25):
Yep.

Peter Wilson (54:26):
Yeah, so it was kind of cool to find that. It was very lucky. I can’t imagine it would’ve been much like this back in the day. And I identified the few people whose opinions I trust, like Dave died. They hadn’t heard of it, which surprised me.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:45):
Oh, we got to thank you for

Peter Wilson (54:46):
Brad. That’s a really impressive art.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:49):
That’s awesome.

Peter Wilson (54:51):
No problem, Brad. Anytime.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:53):
Anytime buddy. Because

Peter Wilson (54:54):
I’m not always on, so I can say that the promise, I don’t have to keep

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:00):
The time travel is not from Australia. He lives in California. It’s not explained.

Peter Wilson (55:08):
That explains it. That explains why you

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:10):
Haven’t seen these comics. That would explain it.

Peter Wilson (55:13):
Very good. I haven’t seen of

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:14):
These comics myself.

Peter Wilson (55:16):
No, that was lucky. But I’m glad I found them.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:23):
Well that’s pretty much the show. We’ve done our comics support Australian indie comics people, whether it’s going down to places like these and Impact and other stores that support indie comics or if it’s supporting Kickstarters like Bradley’s or if it’s just going to places like comic shop. Oh, where would that be? And buying some indie comics. So yeah. So on that note, I’m going to end the show on an ad. So beautiful. Goodnight, all

Peter Wilson (56:00):
Good night.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:01):
See you next week for another comic show. And thank you Peter, very much for standing in and for hopefully being a continued member of the hosting team.

Peter Wilson (56:12):
I’m keen.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:14):
Awesome. Awesome. Let’s do

Peter Wilson (56:15):
It.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:17):
Night all.

Peter Wilson (56:17):
Bye all.

Voice Over (56:20):
Thank you. Feeling a little down,

Voice Over (56:24):
Tired of reading the same old books again and again looking for something different. Why not head over to the comic shop now and pick yourself up some freshly inked. Inspiration.